


Carnival Carnage

by VaderzGirl



Series: Welcome to the Carnival (Discord W-T prompt) [2]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Discord Wayhaven Prompt, F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 11:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17424857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaderzGirl/pseuds/VaderzGirl
Summary: When UB goes to the carnival together, Dezh and Adam take their 'fun' a bit too seriously.This is in response to a prompt on the Wayhaven-Talk server on Discord. The prompt was  "Hanging Out with Friends" for the carnival.Much thanks to @Eravel for editing this for me!





	Carnival Carnage

**_Carnival Carnage_**  
  
Felix took another big bite of the fried—what did Dezh call this thing again, a Snickers bar? Well, whatever it was, it was sugary and greasy and filled with awesomeness, so he had no complaints. The food at this place was _amazing_. In the short time they’d been there, he’d already polished off a big bucket of caramel corn, something the detective had bought him as soon as they stepped through the carnival gates. Eager to try more sweet treats, he took another bite of the candy bar.  
  
Despite Mason and Nate’s annoyed expressions, Felix thought the night was off to a good start. He hadn’t known what to expect from the carnival, other than crowds of noisy people—of which there was an abundance—and the opportunity to try different rides and foods. They had yet to try the former, but watching Dezh and Adam was proving entertaining enough for now. And, given the sour look on the detective’s face, it was about to get better.  
  
“Oh no,” Nate said with a quiet groan. “Not again.”  
  
“What kind of shit are you pulling?” Dezh demanded in a loud growl, shaking a dart at the man who ran the booth she and Adam had chosen for their next round of competition. The first had been ten minutes of them throwing footballs into a hole, then—after every ball thrown by the two of them made it through the hole—they’d demanded the guy running the booth choose whose throws were better. How was anyone supposed to judge that? The poor guy had tried to reason with them before finally running them off, refusing to give them their prizes and banning them from his booth for the entirety of the carnival. Their next victim looked even angrier than the first. Dezh shook the dart again. “This dart isn’t sharp enough to pierce a balloon. There’s no point on it!”  
  
Adam nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. “And those balloons are underinflated. You _cannot_ test someone’s skill with inferior equipment.”  
  
_Skill_? With darts and balloons? Felix nearly choked on his fried candy bar—Unit Bravo’s illustrious team leader was _seriously_ complaining about balloons and darts!  
  
“I don’t know what you’re—”  
  
“Look at this!” Dezh interrupted, slamming the tip of the dart into her hand and making Felix wish he’d brought a video camera. “It won’t even draw blood! How the hell is it gonna burst a flaccid balloon?”  
  
Felix burst into laughter, glancing at Mason when he did the same. “This was supposed to be fun,” Nate said quietly, rubbing his forehead with both hands.  
  
“Oh, this _is_ fun!” Felix’s voice carried, drawing the attention of the small crowd that had gathered to listen to Dezh and Adam berate the booth attendant.  
  
“And the rest are just as bad!” To prove her point, Dezh attempted to stab her arm with another dull dart and failed miserably. “What a rip off!”  
  
“They’re right,” someone in the gathered crowd agreed. “Those darts are dull and the balloons look… limp.”  
  
Felix stared at the guy who’d spoken. “If he was trying to make that sound less lewd, he totally failed.”  
  
Mason barked a laugh that was so loud the entire crowd turned to look at him. They quickly looked away and huddled closer together when he snarled.  
  
The booth attendant dropped his voice and muttered softly to the two troublemakers, most likely so the other customers couldn’t hear him. Felix heard just fine, though. That made _two_ booths Adam and Dezh had been banned from since they’d gotten here.  
  
“I can’t believe he paid us to go away,” Dezh said when they were all together again, staring at a handful of bills with a curled upper lip. “Why couldn’t he just fix the goddamned game?”  
  
“Because people might win,” Adam answered sullenly.  
  
Nate stepped closer to them, shaking his head. “Will you two please stop now? You don’t need to—”  
  
“I know!” Dezh interrupted, shaking her fistful of money at Adam. “The game where you shoot the star out!”  
  
Adam scoffed. “With what?”  
  
“A weak-ass BB gun.” Dezh sniffed, her gaze scanning the area. “They try to rig that, too, but there are ways to beat it.”  
  
“If you already know how to beat it, that’s hardly a fair competition.”  
  
Dezh rolled her head around to sneer at the team leader. “Chicken much? Just shoot a circle around the star to get rid of it. It’s mostly skill.”  
  
“Unlike throwing dull darts at flaccid balloons,” Felix quipped, unsurprised when neither Adam nor Dezh looked his way. Rolling his eyes, he followed along behind the team as they maneuvered through the crowd.  
  
                                                                           *  
  
Bored with watching two supposed adults endless shoot tiny round pieces of metal at a piece of paper and argue over who was best at it, Felix’s amber gaze scanned the nearby booths. He wasn’t certain why he felt so fidgety. Maybe it was because Dezh had threatened to shoot Adam with the tiny fake gun and had yet to follow through. Or maybe it was because his fried candy bar was long gone. He wanted more carnival snacks. While Dezh and Adam argued over who shot the star out with more finesse, he wandered to the booth a few feet away to find something to eat.  
  
A pretty blond lady in uniform flashed him a pearly smile, her round face lighting up like a beacon in the night. “What can I get you, hon?”  
  
Propping an elbow on the counter, he winked and smiled back. “What are you offering?” His gaze drifted to her name tag and he quickly added, “Lily.”  
  
Though she blushed like the sun had burned her cheeks, she didn’t look away. She did, however, squeak. “Caramel apples. And… my phone number?”  
  
Adam would kill him, he knew, but he took both. By the time he got back to Nate and Mason, carrying a gooey apple on a stick, Adam and Dezh were literally stomping toward them. At least, Felix _thought_ it was Dezh. He couldn’t really tell, considering most of her body and head were hidden behind a gargantuan purple unicorn and a slightly smaller stuffed wolf. Only when she got closer did he notice she just managed to peek through a gap between the toys.  
  
“Here,” she snapped, shoving the purple unicorn at him. “I got this for you.”  
  
Dezh’s preferred method of giving people presents—shoving a gift at them as she growled or grumbled—did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm over the unicorn. Grinning, he grabbed it with his free arm, careful not to let the caramel touch it. “Thanks! So who won?”  
  
Both Adam and Dezh snarled at once. “It was a tie,” the detective answered, sounding like a sullen child, “and he wouldn’t let us play anymore.”  
  
“That’s three for three,” Mason said with a snort. “Banned from every booth you’ve been to.” A strange smirk formed on his lips as he caught her eye. “But not for good reasons this time, yeah?”  
  
As her gaze locked onto Mason, the detective seemed to be fighting against the smile that curled her lips and caused her eyes to crinkle in amusement. Felix watched the two of them for a moment, hoping the extreme heat bouncing between them didn’t melt the candy off his apple. There was a story there, he had no doubt. They’d been here two nights earlier, posing undercover as a couple. Obviously, it had come all too easy for them. His lips curled into an amused grin. “What did you two—”  
  
“I don’t see how these people make any money if they continually ban people from games,” Adam interrupted. “And I still say the circle on that last star I shot out was better formed than yours. Yours looked more like an oval.”  
  
“Are you blind?” Dezh growled. “An _oval_? Do you even know what an oval is?”  
  
“Will you two _please_ stop this?” Nate pleaded.  
  
They didn’t answer. And, really, they didn’t have to.  
  
                                                                         *  
  
“I don’t understand the point of this game.”  
  
Dezh huffed loudly, bumping Adam with her elbow so he’d watch the two people ahead of them play. “What the hell don’t you understand? It’s not rocket science, Adam! You just squirt in the clown’s mouth to fill up the balloon.”  
  
Barking a laugh, Felix nudged Mason. “I’m thinking he’ll be better at that.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Mason responded with a smirk, “I think it’s been a long time since he squirted anything anywhere.”  
  
“Mason! Felix!” Nate’s reprimand barely cut through Felix’s loud chortling. “You two aren’t helping.”  
  
Helping? Why would they _help_? Tears rolled out of Felix’s eyes. Unfortunately, he couldn’t wipe them while one arm was filled with a giant unicorn and the other held a giant wolf. He shoved the wolf at Mason. “Hold this.”  
  
“No,” the broody vampire growled, pushing it back.  
  
Felix rolled his eyes. “It’s not gonna bite you. I—”  
  
“No fucking way, that one has better water pressure!” Dezh’s voice carried through the air, drawing attention from… well, from pretty much everyone. “Gimme it!”  
  
The poor woman running the booth had no chance of stopping them, but she tried anyway. “Please, will you both—”  
  
“I got here first,” Adam argued, almost as loudly. “Use a different one.”  
  
“You got here first because you pushed me, you big doofus!” Instead of arguing further, the detective made a grab for the water gun in question. “The rest of these bloody things have hardly any water pressure at all! And you know it!”  
  
The two of them struggled for the water gun, ignoring Nate when he moved closer to try to reason with them, until, finally, Adam snatched it from her reach. And completely snapped the cable that had held it in place.  
  
Adam, Nate, and Dezh froze for a moment. A moment was all it took for the booth attendant to take control. “Leave!” she yelled. “And if you two try coming back here, I’ll have security throw you out!”  
  
Adam’s jaw tightened so much, Felix was surprised his teeth didn’t crumble. “I… apologize.”  
  
“Just go!”  
  
“That was your fault,” Adam grumbled at Dezh as they walked away from the booth.  
  
Dezh sneered. “Up yours.”  
  
“That makes four for four,” Mason pointed out, flicking his lighter open and closed.  
  
Nate shook his head in that way he always did when he was disappointed with people and was about to launch into what Dezh had affectionately named ‘Mom Mode.’ “And four is quite enough. Unless your goal is to get us banned from the carnival, we don’t need a fifth.”  
  
Dezh and Adam just glared at each other.  
  
                                                                           *  
  
Of course, they had to try for the fifth.  
  
“There’s no way you can best me at a test of strength, Detective.” Adam snorted. “The thought is ludicrous. You’ll humiliate yourself.”  
  
Mason shook his head. "She's gonna hit him with that big hammer if he doesn't shut up."  
  
“I sure hope so,” Felix laughed, taking another huge bite of the weird-looking fried concoction the detective had gotten him. Why was it called a funnel cake? It looked like a tangled mess. It tasted heavenly, though.  
  
“We need to find some way to put a stop to this.” Nate’s tone was firm, his mouth set in a tight frown. It would’ve appeared more serious if the man hadn’t been holding Dezh’s stuffed wolf. Felix had seen the expression before, though not often. What good it would do was questionable. Trying to stop a tornado would likely be easier than stopping Adam and Dezh, a point emphasized by their ongoing argument about the so-called strong man test they had approached.  
  
“You want them to stop?”  
  
Felix’s head swiveled toward Mason, one eyebrow raising slightly. Other than laughing and making snarky comments, he’d said scant little since they’d gotten there. So, pretty much like normal.  
  
When Nate nodded, Mason gave a small shrug. A smirk formed on his lips right before he sauntered over to the detective, moved behind her, and leaned down closer to whisper into her ear.  
  
Felix couldn’t quite make out what the broody vampire said, but his words caused the corners of the detective’s mouth to twist into a smirk of her own. A low chuckle and she nodded, tossing the hammer to the ground. “I’m out,” she said flatly, spinning on her heel and starting to walk away.  
  
“Then I win,” Adam announced smugly. His self-satisfied expression faded somewhat when Dezh muttered something to Mason, turned, and marched back toward the team leader. Wordlessly, she lifted the hammer over her head, took a breath, and slammed it down onto the round metal pad. A split second later, the bell rang.  
  
“Suck it,” she said, throwing the hammer at him and hurrying back to Mason’s side.  
  
Mason barked a laugh. “Meet you back here in twenty minutes,” he told them, then he and the detective disappeared into the crowd.  
  



End file.
